10 Places on Earth That Look Completely Alien

Sure, you can get a cheeseburger almost anywhere, but when you're traveling, why not sample the food the locals specialize in – and love? Street food gives you a tasty window into another culture. Here are our recommendations for your next trip. Read more »

Author's Note: 10 Places on Earth That Look Completely Alien

When I was young, I enthusiastically devoured a series of juvenile science fiction novels about a team of future space cadets led by the intrepid Tom Corbett. The depictions of other planets in the books bore little resemblance to reality — Venus, for example, was a hot and humid but otherwise Earth-like environment. But those books started me pondering about what other places in the cosmos must look like, and I've been thinking about that ever since. That curiosity made this assignment even more interesting for me, because I could at last see places on Earth that were comparable to the worlds conjured by my imagination.